Flight number record
UA 253
United Airlines · Houston to Honolulu
- Route
- IAH → HNL
- Departs
- 10:10
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 253, check with United Airlines.
UA 253 lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 40 minutes on average. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
79.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 362 completed flights
Avg delay
42 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.82%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
3.0%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 3 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Schedule
When UA 253 flies
UA 253 flies IAH to HNL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 10:10, used on 114 of 365 flights, with 09:35 (93 flights) and 10:15 (44 flights) next.
- Departs 10:10114 flights31.2%
- Departs 09:3593 flights25.5%
- Departs 10:1544 flights12.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.
A 10:10 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, and UA 253 runs 5 points worse at 79.0%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Against the route
UA 253 next to IAH to HNL
Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, close to this flight's figure.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 253 | 365 | 79.0% | 42 min | 0.82% | B+ |
| All United Airlines on IAH–HNL | 365 | 79.0% | 42 min | 0.82% | B+ |
| All carriers on IAH–HNL | 365 | 79.0% | 42 min | 0.82% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 253 quarter by quarter
UA 253 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 90.0% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 65.6%, a swing of 24 points on roughly 73 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights90.0%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights88.0%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights79.8%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights65.6%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights78.7%
Scale runs 55% to 95%.
By weekday, UA 253 did best on Tuesday at 86.3% on time and worst on Thursday at 73.1%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 13 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 253 runs when it is late
The 76 late arrivals split 37 under half an hour, 28 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 11 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early89 flights24.6%
- Within 15 min197 flights54.4%
- 15–29 min late37 flights10.2%
- 30–59 min late28 flights7.7%
- 1–2 hours late6 flights1.7%
- 2+ hours late5 flights1.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 362 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 104 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 54 still arrived on time. In the other direction, 26 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at HNL.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 253
The latest arrival of the period was on 15 June 2026, 4 hours 58 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. The five worst days are spread across June, April, July and September, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 15 June 2026 | 4 hours 58 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 2 April 2026 | 2 hours 33 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 13 July 2026 | 2 hours 25 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 September 2025 | 2 hours 12 minutes | Carrier |
| 9 July 2026 | 2 hours 5 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 253 runs late
Carrier accounts for 43% of the 3,207 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%Carrier
- 32%National Airspace System
- 16%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%Extreme weather
32% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 1,035 minutes out of 3,207, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 3,207 delay minutes reported on UA 253.
Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.0% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 3,904 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
Every one of the 365 flights under UA 253 in the data flew IAH to HNL. The number was not reused on any other city pair, which makes this a clean record of one route.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 365 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking UA 253
For a booking, read UA 253 as 79.0% on time with 0.82% cancelled over 365 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- Daniel K. Inouye International (HNL) delay statistics
- United Airlines on-time record
- Every United Airlines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
A flight number here means United Airlines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.